University of Melbourne Alumni in the UK
Coming up: Gala dinner with special guest speaker Professor Germaine Greer
Piano recital at Royal Festival Hall, 9 June 2009
Save the Date! More UK Alumni Association events in 2009
9 September 2009
Gala dinner with special guest speaker Professor Germaine Greer
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Piano Recital at Royal Festival Hall, 9 June 2009
ON a day of industrial action on London's Underground network reported to have cost the UK economy £100 million over two days, twenty-five of the University's UK Alumni found a way to Royal Festival Hall for a piano recital and reception overlooking the London Eye, Thames River and iconic Houses of Parliament. Special guest speaker Professor Malcolm Gillies (DMus 2004) gave a wonderful introduction to the works being performed by pianist Piotr Anderszewski, discussing amongst other topics how artists go about putting together a programme of the one that was performed. Professor Gillies awarded a CD containing one of the works being performed to the oldest alumnus in attendance, having discovered there were alumni present from every decade since the 1940s.
The Guardian's music critic, Andrew Clements, who gave the concert at 5 star rating said:
"Gesänge der Frühe was Schumann's last major work, composed in 1853 just before his final mental breakdown. Generally dismissed as inferior to the earlier, better-known piano cycles, it is hardly ever heard, but characteristically Piotr Anderszewski chose to begin his Festival Hall recital with it. Though even his mercurial way with Schumann could do little with the doggedly insistent central movement, his rapt unfolding of the chorale-like opening and closing numbers, and gossamer touch with the swirling textures of the fourth showed that, beneath all the muddiness, Schumann's very personal vein of musical poetry still survives.
Anderszewski linked the pieces without a break to Bach's E minor Partita, whose buoyancy and rhythmic vigour provided the perfect antidote to such dark-hued introspection. The clarity, litheness and unforced spontaneity of his Bach was a constant joy, tracing a seamless arc from the elaborate figuration of the opening Toccata to the leaping muscularity of the final, fugal Gigue, and making unexpected contrapuntal connections across the interval to Janácek's In the Mists, in which the episodes of each movement were fiercely contrasted and the musing, wistful melodies between them hauntingly voiced.
Beethoven's A flat Sonata Op110 was the last work, presented, like the rest of the recital, without a trace of unnecessary flamboyance, yet conceived as a single musical organism, with every chord perfectly weighted, every phrase exactly balanced. Throughout the recital, the delicacy and control of Anderszewski's pianissimo playing were sources of wonder, and the return of the fugue in the finale of the Beethoven was a breathtaking moment, fragile and intense at the same time. The encores - Bartók folksongs, then more Bach - were perfectly judged, too."
When asked by an alumnus during the pre concert talk what encore the pianist might perform,
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Professor Gillies thought it could be one of the Six Bagatelles by Bartok, a work the pianist was scheduled to perform but substituted at the last moment. He was nearly right - one of the encores was Bartók folksongs, which he told us were written just one year earlier than the Bagatelles.
The Committee of the University of Melbourne UK Alumni Association would like to thank Professor Gillies for his participation in this event.
Damien Boyle
Treasurer, University of Melbourne UK Alumni Association
